Featured

Student Project Ideas

Suppose there's a new film coming out soon that many of your students are excited about. You can take that opportunity to give them some assignments they'll enjoy. Different assignments will require different skills and produce different results. They'll involve both subjective and objective looks at the film, before and after. Here are some ideas.

Nowadays, music is ubiquitous, as are the devices that play them. Most people just play music off their computers or phones. Many kids in school don't even know what CDs are, not to mention vinyl. They'll encounter different music players through images and movies, and since everyone loves music, why not assign them the task of learning the history of music recordings.

Make your students form an argument as to why something is better than the alternative. Of course, you should first go over the structure of an essay, and maybe various phrases one could use in an argument. But to prompt them for further practice, here are twenty topics. They should choose which of a pair to support, and their arguments could be subjective, objective, or both.

A great way to engage students is to create projects within contexts and formats that they are already using in their personal lives. One of my favorite ways of doing this is through blogs. Teenage students already spend a lot of time online, especially on social media sites, so why not encourage them to continue their online interactions, just in English instead?

Featured

Teacher Tips & Insights

Writing with Colors

I've found that using colors when writing on the whiteboard can be helpful in multiple ways. Colors can be used to create associations in the minds of learners. The more you repeat the same method of color usage, the more those associations will strengthen in the learners' minds. Using these associations, students are quicker to find mistakes or identify what they're supposed to do. Read More

Avoid Saying 'Good'

'Good' is such a boring word. Why say 'good' when you could say 'positive', 'appropriate', 'beneficial', or plenty of other synonyms with more specific definitions. 'Good' is just too broad. If you forbid your students from using 'good' - a word they have reason to use often - they'll have to learn some of its synonyms and the differences between all those synonyms. It's a great way to improve their vocabulary. Read More

Define Your Own Terms

There are lots of multi-syllable official terms we use exclusively for English class. Words that are long, strange-sounding, and infrequent enough that they are hard to remember. As long as learners understand a concept, who cares what name they attach to it? Make it easier on them by using simpler and more memorable made-up terms instead. (You'll notice we do these in our videos.) Read More